Mack Daddy

“Mack Daddy” is the third studio album by Sir Mix-a-Lot, released on February 4, 1992, through Def American Recordings and his own Rhyme Cartel imprint.

The story

After two platinum and gold albums on Nastymix, Sir Mix-a-Lot signed with Rick Rubin’s Def American in 1991. Rubin served as executive producer of “Mack Daddy”, and the move gave the Seattle rapper national distribution and promotion for the first time. The first single, “One Time’s Got No Case”, came out in 1991 and took on racial profiling and police misconduct, themes that recur across the album.

Sound and production

Mix-a-Lot produced the album with Rubin, with co-production by Nate Fox on two tracks and Strange on five, and he also engineered and mixed it. The album mixes the electro and Miami bass influences of his Nastymix records with samples from Prince, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Bobby Byrd; “One Time’s Got No Case” is built on Stevie Wonder’s “You Haven’t Done Nothin’”. Alongside the political tracks are the comic “Swap Meet Louie” and “Baby Got Back”, a celebration of women with larger figures set to a booming bass track.

Legacy

“Baby Got Back” became one of the most commercially successful rap singles of its era. It spent five weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1992, was certified double platinum, ranked as the second best-selling song in the United States that year and won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best Rap Solo Performance. MTV initially restricted its video to late-night airplay after complaints. Carried by the single, “Mack Daddy” reached No. 9 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and was certified platinum by the RIAA. “Swap Meet Louie” followed as the third single. Nicki Minaj later sampled “Baby Got Back” for her 2014 single “Anaconda”, which Mix-a-Lot called a new and improved version of his song.

Released February 4, 1992. More from hip hop in 1992.